His Italian machinations were opened with imposing effect; and in Lombardy his most devoted adherents were artfully employed in disseminating the idea of the insecurity arising to the Cisalpine Republic from the temporary nature of its government.
[1801-1802 A.D.]
Whilst these ideas were disseminated amongst the people, Petiet negotiated with the chiefs of the republic, in order that the imperative commands of the consul might appear to be the desires and the spontaneous supplications of the nation. When the consultations were concluded at Paris for the design, and at Milan for its execution, a decree was issued by the legislative council of the Cisalpine Republic, commanding an extraordinary consulto to proceed to Lyons, in order there to frame the fundamental laws of the state, and to give information to the consul.[b]
In December, 1801, at Lyons, a deputation of four hundred and fifty citizens, from the Cisalpine Republic, offered to Napoleon, then first consul, the presidency of their government for a term of years. He accepted the gift, and in January, 1802, with the assent of the deputies, promulgated a constitution for their state, which was now named the Italian Republic. In June following, the Ligurian Republic likewise accepted an altered charter, which received modifications in December. The Piedmontese, wearied of anarchy and of their despot, General Menou, consented, for the second time, that their country should be made a province of France; and the formal annexation took place in September of the same year.
Piazza della Collegiate
The gradual changes of view in Bonaparte and his countrymen are curiously illustrated by the successive constitutions which their influence established in Italy. In 1802, at home as well as abroad, they were immeasurably distant from the universal citizenship and primary assemblies of 1793; southern polity differed in several prominent points from that which had been imposed on their own country. It is best exemplified by the constitution of the Italian Republic, which was closely copied in the Ligurian; and these charters were considered at the time, not without probability, as experiments by which, as we have said, the first consul tried the temper of his future subjects on his own side of the Alps. In the first place, this system boldly shook off democracy; for the citizens at large were disfranchised, not indeed in words, but in reality: a step which had not been fully taken in France, even by Bonaparte’s consular constitution. Next, the Italian acts divided among the colleges, or bodies of the middle and upper classes (boards elected with something like freedom of choice), most of those functions which in Paris were committed to the consul’s favourite tool, the self-appointed senate. Lastly, the mass of the people being thus disarmed, and the educated leaders lulled into acquiescence, the president of the state received a power far beyond even that which he exercised over his French fellow-citizens.
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC
The details of the constitution given to the Italian Republic are historically curious, in relation both to what went before and to what followed.